04/09/2007

Why the internet is inherently dangerous

Today I learned a valuable lesson about advice you read on the internet: there is always the slight chance it may kill you. I guess I knew that, somewhere way back in my brain. But an event this morning brought it rushing to the forefront with a bang. Recently, I have been having problems with my cordless drill. This is an 18-volt Milwaukee, a serious piece of toolery that has bored many a hole and driven thousands of screws. Always reliable, it never failed. Until now. The last few days, it seemed the batteries were not taking a charge anymore. This happens after awhile, but I felt it was a bit early in its lifespan for this to happen, so I was puzzled. But, I did use it a lot in the dead of winter, so I chalked it up to overuse and environment. Somewhere, in the back of my head, I was thinking about how odd it was that all three batteries should go at once, especially since one was much newer than the other two. But I didn’t entertain this thought for too long and I began to research the cheapest place to buy a replacement battery on the internet. While reading Amazon’s user reviews, it seemed many folks were lamenting how crappy Milwaukee batteries are, which is such a shame because the tools themselves are top notch. As I skimmed through them, resigning myself to the $50-60 I was going to have to shell out, I came across one reviewer who reported a quick and easy way to revive an old battery. All you had to do was take a regular 9-volt battery, align its positive and negative terminals with the corresponding terminals on the drill battery, maintain contact for thirty seconds, and voila! The drill battery is wiped clean and will now accept a charge again. Simple as pie. Have you ever made a pie? Not so simple, especially if your crust is from scratch. But I read on, and another reviewer said he tried it and it worked great. This is awesome, I thought to myself. I have to try this. So I grabbed a 9-volt from my guitar tuner, matched up the terminals, and counted to thirty. I then plugged in the drill battery into its charger, fully expecting it be as good as new and take a charge. The red light went on, and 1 minute later, it went off. Damn. It didn’t work. Ok, maybe the 9-volt was too weak. Plus, I didn’t run down the drill battery completely. I knew I had a brand new 9-volt in my tool bucket on the hillside, so I figured I would give it another shot down there. As soon as I arrive, I take the drill and clamp the trigger in the ‘on’ position, and let the battery run down. This doesn’t take long. In the meantime, I grab the new battery. In an uncharacteristic flash of foresight, I also grabbed my safety goggles. These are pretty cool as safety goggles go, orange wraparound ones that sort of make me look like Bono. So I put on the goggles, grab the two batteries, touch the terminals together, and begin counting. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, twenty four, twentyBAM! I jumped about three feet in the air, dropped everything, and counted my fingers. All there. Looked at the drill battery. A little singed, but seemed to be ok. Found the 9-volt battery—toast. It had exploded, shooting some undoubtedly toxic goo across the room and leaving a trail of plastic shards on the floor. As I stared at it, it popped again, and I jumped again, and promptly opened the door and kicked the battery into the snow. Holy cow. Once my heart rate returned to a semblance of normal, I tried to piece together what had happened. Over the course of the workday, I think I figured it out. You see, the problem with the drill doesn’t seem to be the batteries. I think it is with the drill body itself, specifically where the body connects with the battery. It doesn’t seem to be drawing power from the batteries like it should be, accepting only a trickle at a time. This proved out when the drill would not work until I banged it against something, thus confirming my suspicion that certain pieces were not meeting up like they should. This would explain all of the problems. The batteries seemingly to be out of juice, but not taking a charge, was really the drill not accepting the charged battery. Thus, when I tried to charge the battery, which I thought was dead, it was actually almost fully charged, which was why it wouldn’t accept a charge from the charger. So when I thought the battery was discharged, it really wasn’t, it just wasn’t working with the faulty drill. This leads to me trying to jump start an almost fully charged 18 volt drill battery with a 9 volt battery, but electricity doesn’t work that way, evidently. What actually happened was the 18 volt battery was sending a lot of juice into the little 9 volt battery. Ergo, the explosion. So what have we learned here? Trust the little thoughts in the back of your head. Trust logic. Don’t mess with electricity. If safety goggles are cool and make you look like an international rock star you are much more likely to wear them. Conduct experiments that have a chance to go horribly wrong outside of your brand new house, not inside the future dining room. And, most importantly, beware the misinformation highway. It’ll put your eye out if you’re not careful.